So things went on for a fortnight. Fulbert never shuffled, he went openly to Marshlands Hall; and though not boasting of his expeditions, did not treat them as a secret. Wilmet and Geraldine each tried persuasion, but were silenced rudely; and Felix, unable to enforce his authority, held his tongue, but was very unhappy, both for the present and for the future. He did not believe much harm was doing now, but the temptation would increase with every vacation as the boys came nearer to manhood; and he seemed to have lost all influence and moral power over Fulbert.
Good old Mrs. Froggatt gave a small children's party, to which, with many apologies, she invited the lesser Underwoods, under charge of Wilmet. They were to sleep at the cottage, and Wilmet having offered to help in dressing the Christmas-tree, they set out early in the day to walk, escorted by the three brothers. That the trio did not return to tea did not alarm Felix and Geraldine, who suspected that the dislike the two elder expressed to the whole house of Froggatt had melted before the pleasure of working at the tree.
The evening was taken up in the discussion of a letter of Edgar's, more than usually discontented with his employment; and another of Alda's, who had been laid under orders to write to her eldest brother, and desire him to remonstrate with Edgar on his inattention, laziness, and pleasure-seeking. The anxiety had long been growing up; Felix had come to write his difficult letter by the light of Geraldine's sympathy, and they were weighing what should be said, when the door-bell rang, some sounds puzzled them, and just as Felix was getting up to see what was the matter, Fulbert put his head in at the door, and said, low but earnestly, 'Step here, Felix, please.'
He thought there must have been some terrible accident; but when from the top of the stairs he beheld Clement's aspect under the gas in the passage, and heard the thick tones in which he was holding forth according to instinct, his consternation was almost greater than at any injury. Fulbert looked pale and astounded. 'I can't get him upstairs,' he said.
However, sense enough remained to Clement to give effect to his eldest brother's stern words, 'Be quiet, and come up;' and they dragged him stumbling upstairs without more words.
'Where's Lance?' then asked Felix.
'Stayed at the Froggatts'. I wish he hadn't. He will walk home by and by.'
'Now, Ful, run and tell Cherry that nobody is hurt. Do not let her get frightened.'
Felix spoke resolutely, but he felt so full of dismay and horror, that he hardly knew what he was doing till Fulbert had returned, and repressing all poor Clement's broken moralities, they had deposited him safely in bed, and shut the door on him. Then Fulbert gazed up at Felix with eyes full of regret and consternation, and he gathered breath to enter his own room, and say, 'What is the meaning of this?'
'His head must be ridiculously weak: or there was some beastly trick. Nobody else was the least queer!'
'Marshlands Hall?'
'Well, he had gone on at me so, that when Lance let himself be persuaded into staying to hang up the lamps, it struck me what a lark it would be to take Tina across the Hall lands, and then tell him he had been on the enemy's ground. So I told him of the old chantry that is turned into a barn, and of course he must go and see it, and take sketches of the windows for his clergy. While he was doing it, up comes young Jackman. You know young Jackman at the Potteries-a regular clever fellow that knows everything?'
'Yes, I know him.'
'Well, they got into early pointed, and late pointed, and billets and dog-tooths, and all the rest, and Clem went on like a house on fire; and by that time we had got to the big pond, where Collis and half a dozen more were, and he had got his skates, and I believe he did surprise them; they called it first rate.'
'Did he know where he was?'
'Not at the beginning of the skating. I only wanted to get him down from his altitudes, and never thought it would come to this. You believe that, Felix?'
'Yes, I do. Go on.'
'It was fine moonlight, and we stayed on ever so long, while Jackman and Clem and two more danced a quadrille on the ice; and when it was over everybody was horribly cold, and Captain Collis said we must all come in and have something hot; and Jackman said he was going to drive home to dinner at eight, and would take us, but every one got talking, and it was half-past eight before we started. It was all in such a scramble, that I had no notion there was anything amiss till Clem began to talk on the way home.'
'What were they drinking?'
'Various things-brandy-and-water chiefly. I don't like it, and had some ale; but I was playing with Harry's puppies, and not much noticing Clem.'
'Do you think it was a trick?'
'I can't tell. He is so innocent, he would have no notion how stiff to make it. If any one meant mischief, it was Jackman; and I did think once or twice he had found out Tina, and was playing him off. On the way home, when I was trying to hinder poor Clem from falling off, he went on chaffing so, that I longed to jump off, and lay the whip about his ears.'
'Poor Clem!' said Felix, more grieved and shocked than angry, and not insensible to Fulbert's being even more appalled, and quite frightened out of his sulkiness.
'It is a bad business,' he sighed. 'It was all Lance's fault for letting himself be lugged into that baby party.'
Even this was a great admission, and Felix would not blight it by a word.
'It is well the girls are not at home,' was all he said.
'I only told Cherry that Clem wasn't well. I can't face her; I shall go to bed. I would not have had this happen for the world.'
'I shall say nothing to her,' said Felix, dejectedly, turning to leave the room, under a horrible sense of disgrace and stain on the whole family; but at the door he was caught hold of by Fulbert, who looked up at him with a face quite unlike anything he had ever seen in the lad.
'Felix, I never was so sorry in my life. I wish you would give me a good rowing.'
Felix half smiled. 'I could not,' he said. 'You did not know what you were doing. Good-night.'
Fulbert gazed after him as he went downstairs, and went back, with a groan, to his own room.
Felix had never before felt so hopeful about Fulbert; but still he was too much overset to talk to Cherry, and hurried her off to bed, soon following her example, for he had not the heart to see Lance that night.
Of course, the first hours of the morning had to be spent in attending on the victim, whose misery, mental and bodily, was extreme, and was aggravated by his engagement to the organ. Lance could supply his place there, and was sent off to do so, but looking as subdued and guilty as if he had been making Fulbert's confession instead of hearing it, and stumbling uncomfortably over the explanation that Clement was not well, and that Felix could not leave him.
For there was a fragility about Clement's long lank frame that made any shock to it very severe, and he was ill enough to alarm his happily inexperienced brothers, and greatly increase Fulbert's penitence; but by the time Mr. Froggatt drove the sisters home, and Wilmet wondered that she could not go out for a night without some one being ill, he had arrived at a state which she could be left to attribute to Mrs. Froggatt's innocent mince-pies.
He burrowed under his blankets, and feigned sleep and discomfort beyond speech, whenever she came into the room, begging only that the light might be kept out, and that nobody would speak to him. He was too utterly miserable for anger with Fulbert, but only showed a sort of broken-hearted forgiveness, which made Fulbert say in desperation to Lance, 'I wish you would just fall upon me. I shall not be myself again till I've been blown up!'